Unions meet to thrash out PM's reforms

Unions have called a crisis meeting to discuss Kevin Rudd's move to strip political power from the labour movement.

Six trade unions aligned to the Right have scheduled a meeting in Sydney on Friday to formulate a response to the Prime Minister's proposal to give rank and file Labor members a vote for party leader - a reform that will curb the power of caucus and all but prevent union-backed leadership spills to remove sitting Labor prime ministers.

A NSW-based union boss said: ''We don't like being taken for granted.''

He hinted the century-old relationship between Labor and the unions could be recast by the new Rudd leadership amid speculation the Prime Minister is preparing to go even further in his quest to modernise the party.

''Unions have been around for 125 years and will be around for another 125. The Labor Party came out of the working class and the unions and there are strong and close ties with the party but this is a concerning development and we need to discuss our position on Friday,'' he said.

A number of national union leaders, including Australian Workers' Union boss Paul Howes, publicly endorsed the Rudd reforms on Tuesday but Fairfax understands unions had been pushing for any reforms to go no further than the British model in which unions retain a third of the votes for the leader. Mr Rudd's reform proposal, to be endorsed within a fortnight, splits the vote 50:50 between caucus and the membership.

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There is also concern that Mr Rudd is poised to wind back the long-established control by particular unions over Senate seats and upper house seats in state parliaments around the country. For example, a replacement for the Senate seat vacated by Matt Thistlethwaite in his move to contest the seat of Kingsford-Smith will be chosen by the AWU under the current system.

A union source said Friday's meeting would in part try to decide whether Mr Rudd's announcement of Monday was a ''starting point or an end point'' and whether a rule that a change of prime minister would require at least 75 per cent caucus support and proof that the PM had brought the party into ''disrepute'' would place too much power in the hands of the leader.

Right-aligned unions likely to attend the meeting include the United Services Union, the Transport Workers Union, the Electrical Trades Union, the AWU and the Rail, Tram and Bus Union.

The TWU, led by ALP vice-president Tony Sheldon, was due to release a statement on the reform process on Tuesday before declining to comment. Left-wing unions, including the Australian Manufacturing Workers' Union, have fallen in behind Deputy Prime Minister Anthony Albanese who has been arguing hard behind the scenes in favour of the democratic reforms.